


You Looked Happy

by quicksparrows



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-07 23:57:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20984561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: Felix is lured to the training arena under the guise of swordplay but ends up with a trembling in his hands.





	You Looked Happy

.

Felix woke only one way on free days: to the sounds of bedropes being loosened.

It was possibly the most aggravating part of sharing a wall with his best friend, but at the very least, it was predictable. It would always go the same and there was a rhythm and comfort in routine: wake up to a squeaking bed frame, wash, groom and dress himself to the occasional muffled sounds or moans, double-check all of his equipment during some light conversation, wait for a door opening and heeled boots heading down the hall, then head outto the training arena when the coast was clear. There was little diversion; at most, Felix would step away from any particular task and and slam the wooden shutters on his window — he did that when Sylvain had a particularly loud girlfriend, and Sylvain would usually get the point and do something about it. Usually.

By time Felix finished a few hours in the training area, usually alone but occasionally with Raphael, Caspar, Ferdinand or Edelgard, he would head back to the second floor of the dormitories. He’d knock on Sylvain’s door, and Sylvain would appear, still in some state of undress, still with his hair all mussed up.

“One minute,” Sylvain would say, closing the door, and ten minutes later he’d be ready to go, having gone from disheveled to artfully disheveled, a silly grin plastered on his face. “Lunch?”

“Lunch,” Felix agreed.

And then they’d go.

From there, anything could happen.

x

On that particular afternoon, lunch was beef-and-barley stew, which was achingly familiar to two boys who had grown up in the north of Faerghus with barley fields and aurochs herds as far as the eye could see. Though Garreg Mach purported to serve all types, Faerghus simply did not export creature comforts the way the lush fields of Adrestia or the warm oceans of the Leicester alliance. Not even students from Faerghus cared.

Felix imagined he was the only person in the dining hall who actually appreciated a hearty but bland bowl of stew, especially in the middle of summer.

Sylvain pushed it around in his bowl, flicking the carrots to the edge so they would not deign to fall upon his spoon.

“I thought I could escape this kind of stuff by coming here,” Sylvain said.

“Changing houses and eating more southern food made you think you’d escaped Faerghus?” Felix asked, as if Sylvain were a moron. He was a moron. A moron he happened to enjoy the company of, but a moron nonetheless.

“Don’t be pedantic,” Sylvain said. “You know what I meant.”

“I know.”

There was a moment of silence. Felix chose to appreciate his stew.

“I wish you’d stop throwing that in my face,” Sylvain said. “You changed houses too. You don’t have to keep acting like I’m the one running when you-- oh. Hey, Dimitri.”

Felix felt his blood run cold. He could feel someone standing behind him, and even if Sylvain hadn’t said his name, Felix might have figured it out just from some sort of sixth sense, or at the very least a deeply ingrained paranoia. He watched Sylvain look up over his head and exchange pleasantries. Sylvain seemed happy, but maybe the slightest bit guilty, too, given the line of conversation.

“What are you doing this afternoon?” the Boar Prince asked, a smile on his voice.

Felix put down his spoon with a hard clang against the table and gave Sylvain a look as if to say: don’t you dare.

Sylvain ignored him.

“Felix and I are going to the training area after lunch,” he said. “You want to join us?”

Felix glared, but Sylvain ignored him. This was getting increasingly common; Felix thought it was hypocritical of them. Sylvain had been very flippant about the Boar Prince ever since Felix changed houses, and Felix suspected Sylvain would only grow more flippant with Ingrid and Annette in the Black Eagles as well. And Ingrid, mature and responsible as she was, would no doubt treat the new distance from the Boar Prince as an opportunity to miss his episodes.

Both of them would pretend that changing houses allowed them enough breathing space to save their friendships with the Boar Prince, and they would go on socializing with him, smiling and laughing and pretending all was well.

Felix did not see it that way. He had not changed houses to save anything with the Boar Prince. He had changed houses to have an escape route when things went deeply, truly wrong, and the more time he spent with the Eagles, the more he suspected he would be right.

Felix felt a hand on his shoulder. He saw Sylvain’s smile flicker. Felix finally, painfully looked up and found the Boar Prince looking down on him. He was smiling, but there was no ease behind it. He looked as uncomfortable as Felix felt with his hand on him.

“It’s been a while since we sparred,” the Boar Prince said.

“I hope you’re ready,” Felix replied. He couldn’t back down. “I’ve gotten a lot better under Professor Byleth.”

Something about that pleased the Prince. Good, Felix thought. He’d wipe it off his face before long.

x

For the second time that day, Felix walked into the training arena. This time, instead of quietly contemplating how to best push his limits in order to excel, he had to think about how to best apply himself.

It was important, in a way that felt not small and meaningful but big and world-defining, to show the Boar Prince that while he had capitulated and become the sort of man who could not control himself, Felix was a master of self-control. While the Boar Prince could not manage his feelings, Felix expressed himself to a fault. While the Boar Prince could not apply himself diligently with honor, Felix devoted himself to his pursuits, and did them well.

Felix was a man with dignity.

Felix was a man with integrity.

Felix was a man with a future.

As he repeated those things to himself, Sylvain ran past him, slapping him on the shoulder as he went. He watched Sylvain rush to the weapons racks and take down training weapons, taking a lance and immediately passing it to the Boar Prince.

The Boar Prince stepped past him. For a moment, Felix braced himself, but he found himself looking anyway. Their eyes met for a second when he passed, and the Boar Prince smiled, easier now. The Prince smiled. Felix pushed down an anger that threatened to close his throat, but his heart pounded. Both standing, he remembered just how tall the Prince was. How broad his shoulders were, how sharp his jaw was.

The Prince walked away from him, right to another weapon rack.

“Felix,” the Prince called. Felix raised his head, and then raised a hand to catch the training sword being tossed his way. Felix let that momentum roll through his arm, twisting the sword in an elegant flourish, and then stopping it with the true edge forward, at the ready. Sylvain let out a whoop, and the Prince laughed.

“Felix is in here every day,” Sylvain said. “He’s going to kick both of our asses, with style.”

“We’ll see about that,” the Prince replied. “I’ve been training every day in the knights’ headquarters."

“With who?” Felix asked. “Alois?”

The Prince smiled.

“Gilbert, actually,” he replied.

Felix scoffed.

“That man is even older than Hanneman.”

“Well, Felix, if you have insight to shed that his experience may not, I’ll gladly hear it,” the Prince replied.

Sylvain whooped. Felix felt the pressure spike, but with it came determination. He paced across the training arena floor instead of replying, figuring he’d be giving the Prince plenty of insight in just a moment. The stone floor was carpeted in a dense, gritty sand; it made any falls less harsh, as it had more give than just bare stone, but it could leave you with a hell of a rash if you hit it too fast. Felix scuffed at it with the toe of his boot. It was hot today. He was sure the ground would be hot enough to cook on. Felix looked up. The sun was at its zenith, beaming right down on them.

(“He’s just off in his own little world, isn’t he?” Sylvain muttered to the Prince. “Don’t worry about it.”)

It was a moist day, too, the sort of humidity that blanketed the skin until everything was uncomfortably damp. Felix could feel sweat beading between his shoulder blades already, and though his vest hid it, he could feel the shirting clinging to his skin.

The Prince wore a pull-over tunic, the kind one would wear under full armor. He stripped it off, and Felix watched the rising hem reveal inch after inch of taut skin and ripping muscle, pale with even paler white scars. Felix realized he was staring and he jerked his gaze away. The Prince laughed.

“I should have worn a lighter shirt. It was so warm yesterday. You’re not warm?”

Felix didn’t know why he’d bothered changing into a clean shirt before lunch, but he certainly wasn’t going to be parading around shirtless. He shook his head.

“I’m fine,” Felix said. “Arm yourself.”

“Do you care what I use?”

“No.”

“It’s sweltering today,” Sylvain remarked.

Sylvain unbuttoned his shirt, too, one-handed, but he kept it on his shoulders. It fluttered open around his waist with every movement. The idiot cared more about looking like some swashbuckling romantic hero than what made him an efficient fighter. Felix sighed and decided to snatch him by it the first good opening he got. Teach him a lesson that could save his life someday, but then again, Sylvain never really learned, did he?

Though Felix supposed Sylvain had stopped bragging about his various escapades, at least to him. The first few months at Garreg Mach had been an insufferable stream of anecdotes; Felix had considered informing Lord Gautier Senior that he might as well have sent a wolf, for all the impact Sylvain had laid upon the local “sheep.” Back in Fhirdiad, most girls either knew Sylvain was trouble or were old enough to remember when he was a snotty-nosed kid, but the girls of Garreg Mach were oblivious. Felix watched them line up for Sylvain’s nonsense over and over again, and walk away crying, spitting mad, or desperate for more.

Sometimes Felix wished he had someone commiserate with about the whole thing. Ingrid was touchy about the subject, and no one else really knew their history. He knew Sylvain had tried to rope the Prince into it just recently, and Felix might have liked to have a laugh with him about how spectacularly that had failed, but he wouldn’t.

He couldn’t.

Felix raised his sword. The Prince and Sylvain came at him at half-speed, taking turns on the offense. Sylvain’s blows came easily, high and low, settled into a predictable pattern; his lance gave him enough reach that counter-attacks would leave him open to the Prince, so he settled on parrying. But the Prince didn’t care to make it simple. It was fine by Felix, as he liked to train hard, but there was a flicker of something in the Prince’s movements that made him feel dangerous. He swung a little heavily. He stepped a little too far into attacks, crowding Felix. Felix’s heart pounded.

The training arena doors creaked open. The lot of them finished trading blows and glanced to look, expecting Ingrid or Raphael or another regular to the area, but only Sylvain’s glance lingered: a lone girl had entered. Felix sighed, realizing what was about to happen.

“Hey!” Sylvain called. Felix watched the girl look him up and down and smile. “Briar, isn’t it? You want to join us?”

“I’d love to, but I’m just here to pick up some training weapons for my friends,” she replied, cheerily. “Perhaps another time?”

“Well, hey,” Sylvain said. “Do you need a hand?”

“I wouldn’t want to take you away from your training,” she said.

“No problem!” Sylvain replied. He set his lance aside and approached her; his shirt billowed open as he walked. “These two have some drills to run through, but I’m not busy. I can go with you, if you’d like.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, but she’d already decided he was going with her. Felix knew it just because fate had it in for him that day, and also because her gaze kept dropping down the length of Sylvain’s torso. Fuck.

“For you, anything,” Sylvain said, and without even stopping to button his shirt, he gestured to the weapon racks. “What am I picking up?”

Felix looked away, some small measure of disgust pooling in his belly. Sylvain was leaving him alone with the Prince, and worse, Felix thought he might be doing it deliberately, and that left a bad taste in his mouth. Felix could feel the Prince watching him.

“I suppose it’s just the two of us, then,” he said. Was that a note of cautious optimism in his voice, or was it blithe ignorance?

“It seems so,” Felix said.

He felt tempted to take the opportunity to tell the Prince what he thought, and any other time he would have, but the Prince was shirtless. It seemed like a stupid thing to let bother him, but it put Felix on edge. It made him feel stripped down himself, and the only thing stopping him from fleeing was that he didn’t want to seem like a coward.

“Well,” the Prince said. “Shall we?”

Felix answered by raising his sword. The Prince did too, and Felix swung on the offense, reaching for the Prince’s thigh, only to be blocked and then swung at immediately in return. Training carried Felix through with ease, but the tension in his forearms sang out as he braced himself to block. The Prince was too fast; he swung again, and Felix blocked again. Without Sylvain behind him, he could travel, so he did, but the Prince closed that distance wherever Felix made it. After a few blows, the Prince went high, and Felix needed to brace his sword with the flat of his hand to keep a solid blow from coming straight down on his head.

It left the muscles in his arms ringing. Felix felt a peculiar buzzing in his chest, but he ignored it.

He pushed it off, sending the Prince’s blade arcing, and he stepped into the offensive, harder than before. The Prince barely parried it and immediately put Felix on the defensive again. Again, Felix was forced to retreat.

They traded blows like that for perhaps twenty minutes, but it felt like longer. Felix trained hard as a general rule, but there was a limit to how much you could learn when you put all of your effort into basic movements. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Practice needed to be precise, not blistering.

But pride stopped Felix from asking him to lay off a little. Pride even pushed him to go harder in turn. The Prince was not as good of a technical fighter, Felix told himself. The difference between them was brute strength and a lack of discipline. It didn’t surprise Felix that the Prince didn’t understand that. The Prince was too emotional, too wounded, too ready to bleed at a moment’s notice. He wasn’t like Felix, a man who had control over himself.

The Prince continued to push him. After a few rounds, Felix found himself unable to find an opening, not without going from sparring to an actual attack. The Prince took foot after foot of ground beneath him, pushing him harder into the defensive. Felix could see him grit his teeth just to concentrate on laying into him, and the look in his eyes...

Felix felt his heel hit a pillar. He adjusted his footing, saw the sword coming at him again, and instead of blocking, he ducked.

There was a tremendous crack as the Prince’s training blade hit the stone pillar and shattered. Wooden shrapnel flew. Felix flinched but steeled himself. He caught the Prince’s eye for a fraction of a second and saw regret and fear. Fear that Felix felt eating at his own concentration.

The Boar Prince dropped the handle.

Felix didn’t think. He moved.

Felix surged forward and activated his Crest. With the sound rushing in his ears and his body moving faster, stronger, he caught the Boar Prince in the ribs. It was a good, hard blow; if not for the training sword’s wooden blade, it might have taken his kidney entirely, but a welt would have to do.

The Boar Prince staggered back and relented, and in that moment, Felix realized he was outright panting, his chest heaving up and down as though he were panicked. Felix felt disgust, though the adrenaline coursing through him was so heady it almost made him nauseous.

Felix turned and walked a few paces away. He exhaled once and composed himself. The whole of him felt sweaty.

This was exactly why he did not like to spar with the Boar Prince.

“That was intense,” the Boar Prince said, and he sounded pleased with himself, though he put a hand to his already reddened side and cringed. Felix kept his back turned; he wiped the sweat from his brow and looked at the shattered pieces of the blade. He imagined what it would have looked like if it shattered against his head. He would have bled. He would have bled badly from any sort of head wound.

Felix turned, slowly. He found the Prince staring at him, and he stared back.

“I don’t know my own strength sometimes,” the Prince said.

“You really don’t,” Felix replied. 

He felt like every inch of him was vibrating with anger, but he pushed it down and away. He had to keep calm. He thought of Sylvain’s own most recent altercation with the Boar Prince, and how easily he’d snapped then, too. He’d never doubted Sylvain was telling the truth, of course, but to be on the receiving end of the Boar Prince’s violence was a sobering reminder of how brutal he was.

He swallowed his breath.

“I really should have pulled that last stroke,” the Prince said. “But I could feel the intensity in your blade, and you just...”

He trailed.

“For a moment, it felt like we were really close again. You knew exactly what I was doing, and I you.”

“To be honest, I thought you were going to kill me,” Felix said.

An appalled look surfaced on the Prince’s face so fast that it might as well have been slapped there.

“Felix,” he said. “I know things have been difficult between us lately, but I would never. You’re one of my dearest friends.”

Felix wasn’t sure he believed it, and every inch of him screamed to walk away and not entertain even one single second of the Prince’s facade, but despite himself, he smiled. If he closed his eyes, maybe he could pretend that was his friend talking, back from the grave.

But he knew the truth.

“Are you done for the day, or do you want to keep sparring?” Felix asked.

The Prince hesitated, and then nodded.

x

Two more rounds later, Felix felt a vibration in his limbs that wouldn’t go. He’d pushed himself too far, he reasoned. What kept him going was that the Prince didn’t seem even remotely bothered. While his breath picked up, his great bare chest rising and falling faster than usual, he stood tall, and he did not tremble. When they stopped to take a break and drink from the well, Felix ordered himself to calm down. The Prince, inexplicably, made it easy — he leant against the side of the well, an affability about his smile that Felix kept returning to. The facade wasn’t real, but it was comforting, in an odd way. Felix could almost pretend it was true.

“Sylvain told me you haven’t been working on your grappling,” the Boar Prince said. “Why not? I thought that’s what you wanted out of your training.”

“The Professor helped me settle on being a mortal savant,” Felix said. “It’s a master class, and highly specialized... she thinks I have potential, but only if I put more hours into it. Grappling just started to feel like a waste.”

“You don’t miss it?"

“Sometimes,” Felix said. “Swordplay is so disciplined. It felt nice to brawl. Let loose.”

“I understand that feeling,” the Prince said. “It’s liberating.”

The two fell silent for a beat as the Prince drank deeply from his cup, and then poured the remainder into his palm. He splashed it over his face, droplets running from his hairline down the slope of his nose, over his cheeks. Felix watched a drop hang precariously off his chin, and another pool in the part of his lips. The Prince reached to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. It was so casual that Felix had to look away.

“Would you like to grapple with me now?”

Felix wasn’t sure how to respond.

“I’m sure you’d beat me soundly,” the Boar Prince said. He smiled.

Felix nodded.

Grappling was very different from swordplay. There was the obvious — a physicality, for one — but there was an intimacy, too. One didn’t grapple with the intensity of a sword fight, as there was no way to land a blow that wouldn’t genuinely injure. Even at its lightest, a punch was a punch, and that left them with something closer to art, passing a slow, gentle energy back and forth, miming the motions of a fight. A hand coming at his head could be caught at a snail’s pace, turned and pushed away, and then returned in the form of another touch, and another, and another. They would scarcely be inches from each other at all times, the backs of their hands brushing, even bracing each other. It was like dancing.

Felix did not want to dance with the Prince. It felt like playing with fire.

But he did, slowly but sure. He put his hands to the Prince’s chest and mimed a push, and the Prince stepped back, smiling despite the theatre of violence. He pivoted and came back, a hand out, and Felix met him. He let the Prince guide him around, and when he felt much too close, Felix turned it back on him, taking back that ground. Back and forth, back and forth.

The Prince chuckled, almost awkwardly.

“Don’t,” Felix muttered. “Concentrate.”

But though the chuckle vanished, the smile did not. Felix guided him through a few more movements, dragging it on just a moment longer, and then having that smile just inches from him felt like too much. He couldn’t look away.

He stepped forward, hooked a foot behind the Prince’s ankle, and then gently pushed him. The Prince stepped back and instead tripped; shock passed over his face as he fell, and grabbed the front of Felix’s vest and pulled him down with him.

The Prince landed on his back in the silt, and Felix landed on top of him. Both recovered just as fast, the Prince lifting his hands as if they were still sharing in the movement. Felix shifted forward to straddle him, raising a fist as if he might punch down.

He didn’t. Instead, he leant forward and put his arm against the Prince’s throat. Felix let out a hard breath. He was getting too emotional. He wasn’t supposed to be losing control, not like the Prince did. He almost expected the Prince to snap under him and turn it into a real fight.

But instead the Prince almost seemed to relax under him, and then he laughed, deep and joyful, and Felix felt it reverberate through his hips, his arms. The Prince looked up at him, his blue eyes vivid. Felix felt the warmth of his skin even through his trousers, through his sleeves.

“What’s so funny?” Felix asked.

“Nothing,” Dimitri said. “You just looked so serious.”

“I was serious,” Felix replied. He felt a pique of amusement, too, almost infectious, and he eased up his grip so he could sit up a little higher. He gazed down at Dimitri. “It’s not like we learn these things for fun.”

Dimitri watched him for a moment, something on the tip of his tongue, but he said nothing. Felix waited for him to spit it out.

“What?” He asked.

“Nothing,” Dimitri said, earnestly. “I just... you looked happy, too, for a moment. It’s been a while since you’ve looked so happy.”

Felix hadn’t realized he was smiling, but it faded quickly. He sat up properly then, releasing Dimitri entirely, and Dimitri sat up, too. For a moment they sat together, the silt of the training arena floor a grit under their palms. It stuck to Dimitri’s back and shoulders. Felix reached and brushed some off his upper arm without thinking, and Dimitri looked at his hand — a gesture in which Felix not only touched Dimitri, but Dimitri touched him too, simply from the warmth of his skin. Felix breathed out hard, and Dimitri reached to cup his face with one hand.

And then Dimitri kissed him.

Or rather, he wasn’t sure of who kissed who; perhaps he’d leant in first and Dimitri closed the distance, or maybe the other way around. Even so, their lips met swift and sweet, and for an instant, Felix felt himself flooded with nostalgia. Dimitri pushed himself up to sit into Felix’s space, and Felix moved with him, smooth as silk, and for a heady moment, Felix forgot himself. He forgot the training arena, and the broken sword, and his moron friends, and the entirety of Garreg Mach. He kissed Dimitri like he was the only thing left in the world — in his world — and Dimitri kissed him harder, and then harder still. Felix groped down Dimitri’s bare chest, settling his fingers somewhere around his belt line, and he felt the heavy, hot protrusion of Dimitri’s cock, straining against the button fly of his trousers.

He wanted to touch more, but he hesitated. Dimitri did not. Dimitri put a big hand around his throat and held him by it, just under his jaw. It startled Felix enough that he registered it, but not enough to stop — he gasped involuntarily and opened his mouth, and Dimitri kissed him so hard it hurt. Locked in place by Dimitri’s hand, Felix felt any nostalgia slip away, feather-light on a powerful wind.

He realized he was kissing the Boar Prince.

He pushed him off. For an instant, the Boar Prince didn’t let him go, and for that instant, Felix felt afraid. He tensed completely, and then the Boar Prince released him. Felix moved away, climbing to his feet and walking.

“Felix,” the Boar Prince called. “Felix!”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Felix said. He picked up his sword as he passed it and returned to the racks, slotting it in a little too carelessly. He looked at his hands and realized he was trembling. It wasn’t just the training. It was just being so close to him.

The Boar Prince had caught up with him. He boxed Felix in as Felix turned to leave, and for a moment they did a shuffle, one blocking the other.

“I don’t understand,” the Boar Prince said. “You kissed me. I thought you... Felix. You have to see how confusing this is for me.”

“Don’t play stupid, it’s just insulting,” Felix replied, and when the Boar Prince didn’t move. He felt ready to fight if he had to, but he wanted to leave more than anything. Though the Boar Prince wasn’t that much taller than him, in that moment, he felt like a mountain of a man. The chest that Felix had laid against just moments before had been replaced by some sort of armor. Felix couldn’t see Dimitri in him, even when the Boar Prince threw him a beseeching look.

“No,” the Boar Prince insisted. “Please, just tell me what’s wrong.”

Felix pushed his way through. The Boar Prince resisted at first, but the moment Felix got clear of him, he started walking away, eyes ahead of him, refusing to look back.

The Boar Prince called after him: “You’re always talking about how much I’ve changed, how different I am! But you’ve changed too, Felix –– I don’t know what to say to you anymore.”

Felix ignored him, heart pounding. He reached the door and pulled it open.

“Argh! I don’t even know what you want, and you’re going to be upset with me no matter what I say."

Felix found himself incapable of crossing the threshold, not with that thrown at his feet. With one hand still on the door, he turned and glowered at the Boar Prince, who stood some distance away, chest rising and falling rapidly, eyebrows dipped in anger.

“Are you fucking stupid?” Felix demanded. It spilled from him like bile. “You could have killed me with blows like that, but still I stayed to spar, because for a moment I thought I saw him. The old Dimitri, the Dimitri I loved.”

He watched the Prince flinch, stunned. Perhaps it was mirrored on his own face; he hadn’t ever said he loved Dimitri before, and it made him sick to think he’d let it slip now, especially to the creature standing before him.

But Felix shucked off his shame.

“That Dimitri is dead,” he spat.

Felix turned and marched off. The ground felt like it was shaking under his feet, but no one he passed — no student, no professor, no nun nor bishop — seemed to notice the earthquake overtaking the world.

The Boar Prince did not follow him.

It was over.

x

Felix could hear Sylvain and some girl from down the hall; there would be silence for a moment, and then the girl would laugh, high and orgasmic, and Sylvain would laugh and shush her and things would be quiet again for another moment. Joy, silence, joy, silence. It carried on as Felix let himself into his room and closed the door. The shutters on his window were already closed, so he lit the oil lamp by his bed and sat on the edge of his bed.

He thought about Dimitri. Not the Boar Prince, but Dimitri. He thought about his easy smile, and his kindness, and how once upon a time they had spoke for hours and made tiny confessions to each other and what they had shared.

He thought about how he had kissed Dimitri, as a boy, and how it wasn’t at all how it was today, kissing the Boar Prince. How different it was. How much it hurt. It wasn’t at all what he imagined, but it hurt to think that there was something there, something that used to be, something just beyond his grasp...

Felix sat and listened to Sylvain do whatever it is he did. He thought about how happy they sounded, and how much fun they were having. It made him resent them. It made him resent just how miserable he felt, and how misunderstood he felt, and how alone he certainly was.

Felix found himself touching himself through his trousers, but he stopped just as quickly. His heart wasn’t in it. His heart felt like it wanted to escape his ribs — by force if it must, even if the effort would shear it in pieces.

It was all over.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally this was Chapter 15 of my ongoing 3H fic, but I ended up taking the story in another direction and scrapped this entire chapter, so I saved this bit, cut out the half that was no longer relevant, and rebuilt it to be a standalone fic. Just as well, as I wrote this when I had no internet to check the dormitory floor plans and accidentally put Sylvain and Felix's rooms next to each other... I would have had to scrap the whole frame of the chapter, anyway! lmaooo


End file.
